


For the Best

by DebetEsse



Category: Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DebetEsse/pseuds/DebetEsse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violet always gets what she wants.</p><p>The story of that production of Hamlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Best

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stephdairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephdairy/gifts).



Violet always got what she wanted.

There had been that time when she was eight and had badly wanted to see the pink flowers behind the schoolhouse that Lucy Ochre would not shut up about, but they had just looked white. But then, of course, she had decided that she didn’t need those stupid pink flowers anyway and convinced one of the Green boys to pull them up and dump them on the perpetulite and that was the end of that. Then they’d planted some nice butterwort, and she’d written a poem about the color, since she was the only one in school who could see it properly. And she’d won 100 merits for it at the Jollity Fair. Which really went to prove the point. It was like Munsell. 

Rule 1.1.01.01.001: Violet always gets what she wants. 

And anything else just required loopholery, social influence, or asking Daddy. Violet was rather proud of how little she had to ask Daddy anymore. She had, for example, simply had to make it known to one or two people that she wanted to play Ophelia, and it had happened. At one rehearsal, she had overheard Tommo comment that she was really more of a Gertrude, but he wasn’t even in the play and what did he know, anyway? But he was useful, so she pretended she hadn’t heard it.

Munsell was very clear that performances were to be held twice a year, a play in the winter and a musical in the summer. Participation in one or the other was mandatory. Of course Mrs. Gamboge had only scheduled half of them for the minimum hour of volunteering, but that was still enough labor, under the careful supervision of Mrs. Ochre, the director, for the set and props to be coming together. There were only a few costumes needed, of course, one for the pooka and then the Riffraff. Everything else was clothes from their own wardrobes. Violet had decided that Ophelia would have fewer merit pins than she did, although it meant that the front of her pinafore looked quite bare. She couldn’t bring herself to add any negative badges; although, the way she turned out, surely she would have had some. 

Violet looked at herself in the mirror again and recalled what Mrs. Ochre had said to her at the last rehearsal. They had been running her last scene, after Ophelia’s Ishihara, where she had not had enough blue to stay a Liseran, and been demoted to a Crimson, and Hamlet had broken their engagement. 

“The flowers aren’t just a list, Violet. They’re all her plans, falling apart. As you drop them, you’re losing part of yourself, realizing that you never saw what they really looked like, anyway.” She tried to make her saddest face, but it was no use. Honestly, what kind of person wouldn’t realize that she barely had any blue? All she would have to do was look at the sky. And she would be better off without Hamlet, anyway. He never did anything but talk, and not in the useful way, either. Just whinging and moping. No, what she needed to do was find a nice young man with strong blue and some ambition, and she’d be back in the chromogencia in no time. Of course, if it were Violet, she’d take care of both of those, but Ophelia really was nothing like her at all. She looked back at the mirror and noticed that she was frowning, which would not do at all. She reminded herself of how wonderful she was and, smiling, got up and went out to start rehearsal.

================

The auditorium was completely silent. Violet laid on the floor, trying to catch her breath while still looking like she was dead. She was really quite pleased with herself. Her display of sadness had clearly been so moving that the cast couldn’t even go on. Surely they would simply end the play when she died, since what was even the point of continuing after her performance had ended. That William Sinoper had written a whole act after this scene just went to show that even he could not have imagined the excellence of her performance. Although, the scene where Hamlet was sad she had died could stay, as sort of a way for the audience to show their respect for her achievement. And then someone, she wasn’t sure who, although she had her suspicions, started clapping. Then there were more, and someone shouted. At first, Violet was pleased, but then she realized that they were not so much applauding her performance of her death scene as the fact that it had been a death scene. 

Without thinking, she stood up and stormed down to the front of the stage, looked out into the audience, and told them off. It was only as she heard the words “go to beige” come out of her mouth that she realized that she had completely interrupted the scene, and, however inappropriate the audience was being, she was still an actor, so she decided to have another go at the scene. She once again delivered her final line, “An’ we follow the word of Musell, all will be well. Apart may we ever be together” and threw herself onto the stage, gurgling and flailing. 

After the scene was over, Violet tore through her book of friends, crossing out the ones she had particularly noticed out in the audience. How unspeakably rude they had been! And not at all contributing to communal harmony! Perhaps she would speak to her father about docking their merits. If they wanted back in her good graces, they would have to earn her friendship back. Yes, it was entirely possible that this would turn out for the best. There was no telling how many favors she would be able to wrangle out of her former and future friends as she was refilling her book. She would be able to get that strange statue of the un-barcoded bouncing goat without horns that Bethany had, and probably a favor off of Tommo without a commission, and the lead in the summer musical. And if she was a little relieved that Maria wasn’t one of the characters who dies in Red Side Story, there was no reason for anyone else to know.


End file.
